Memories
by ICanStopAnytime
Summary: After being rescued, Sayid returns to the island and visits Shannon's grave one last time. Shayid and Sayid, Nadia. Drama.


Title: Memories (Shayid & Sayid/Nadia)

Rating: PG-13

Warnings: Sexual references

Status: Complete.

Summary: After being rescued, Sayid returns to the island and visits Shannon's grave one last time.

**Memories**

Sayid gripped the handlebars of the motorcycle and revved the engine to speed faster through his old campsite. He had seen the crosses looming above the lumped earth in the distance; he had known which one was Shannon's instantly; he had long ago memorized its height and position, although its relative location kept changing every time a new grave was dug.

He did not need to think of that now. There was work to be done. It had not been an easy decision to return to the place where he had witnessed so much suffering, but Nadia had persuaded him to join the team of scientists now commissioned with studying the island's healing properties. Yesterday, a second supply of energy had been discovered, and today they must finish unearthing and investigating the source. With Nadia clinging tightly to his waist, he soon surpassed Tushar, the biochemist, and then Jakob, the engineer, who rode with his physicist wife Michal.

"Let the men do the digging," Michal said to Nadia when they had reached the dig site. "We can begin measuring the electromagnetism."

"I am quite capable of digging as well as any man," insisted Nadia, dislodging a shovel that had been left wedged in the earth by yesterday's team.

Sayid attempted to control his smirk. Nadia did not like to be laughed at, at least, not when she felt she was being compared to a man. She was playful enough with him at other times, but he was certain she would not appreciate his amusement now. He steadied his countenance, took the shovel from her hands, and said, "Naturally you can. But what man can measure so efficiently as you?"

The look she shot him suggested she was not appeased. He leapt gracefully into the pit next to Jakob and Tushar and plunged the shovel into the earth. He did not anticipate the flood of memories this action would unleash.

There had not been two men beside him when he dug Shannon's grave. There had not been even one. He had broken the earth alone, he had turned it alone, he had lumped the brittle dirt in piles alone. And he had mourned alone. Sun had watched him dig, but she had not spoken. Kate had spoken to him later, but, in the end, she had spoken of herself.

Sayid tried to shake the memories from his mind. He would drive them away with labor. That was how he had driven them away the first time; by building in the jungle at night, by cracking coconuts open in the day, by hewing wood with the long-handled axe. And that was how he would drive the memories away now—with work.

Except the memories did not fade throughout the afternoon, and when evening had drawn in, and the scientists made their way back to the dormitory, Shannon still haunted his thoughts. He felt Nadia behind him, gripping him, her firm breasts pressed against his back, but it was Shannon he was thinking of, lying beneath him in the tent, her soft breasts pressed against his bare chest. It was not right, to be feeling Nadia and yet thinking of Shannon. It was not fair to Nadia. It was painful to him.

He brought the motorcycle to a sudden halt and ripped off his helmet. He felt he could not breathe. He had to breathe.

Nadia slipped her hands from around his waist. Her warmth was gone, but that was a relief to him. The coolness was like a breeze when the weather has become too stifling to bear. Sayid turned to Tushar, who had slowed to a stop beside them and lifted his visor. "Can you take Nadia back? There is something I have to do here."

"What is there to do here?" Tushar asked.

Sayid did not like personal questions. Of course, Tushar had not known it was personal. Still, at the moment, Sayid could not help but snap, "Just take her back, will you?"

Sayid felt the bike lighten slightly as Nadia turned her slender, jean-clad legs and slid off. He braced himself for her to ask him what Tushar had asked; he prepared himself for the possibility of the awkward confrontation, but it did not come, and he appreciated that it did not come. She only squeezed his arm and said, "I'll see you later tonight" before joining Tushar on his bike.

Sayid watched them roar into the distance. He reached behind himself to feel if his hair was still securely tied, and then he pressed the helmet down on his head. He turned the bike back toward the graves.

------

The earth was elastic beneath his feet. The early morning rains had softened it. It had not been yielding all those months ago, however, when he had dug her grave. It had resisted his shovel then, and he had needed to pierce it with violent thrusts. But it was well that the earth had fought him; he had wanted to fight something, anything back then.

The necklace was still there where he had draped it. He reached out and fingered it, felt the coarse metal beneath his fingertips, let it go and fall back against the decaying wood of the cross. He dropped to the earth on both knees. He tried to tell Shannon that he had loved her but that it was time to move on. He tried to tell her he had been blessed again. He tried to tell her about Nadia, but he could not tell her anything. He could not speak to Shannon; he could only think of her, of the way she had smiled at him in that tent, like a giddy, almost shy little girl. It was strange, he thought, how gentle their union had been. He knew she had been with many men, but she had not acted like it in that tent. She had seemed almost uncertain of herself. And he had felt like he was the first man to ever move in concert with her.

Nadia, on the other hand, was a firecracker; she could drive him wild with her creative passions, and that was strange too, considering how few lovers she had possessed. Nadia had been given a conservative upbringing, and she could not, would not, wholly shake those values free; sex must mean something significant to her. That was how he had known, when she first offered herself to him, that she loved him even then. And when he took her, he knew that he would not let her walk away again. He had not called that feeling love. Not then. But he did not often think about love, not really. He mostly thought about doing.

It had been like that with Shannon, too; he thought about protecting her, about consoling her, about worshiping her with his body…but he did not think of loving her, and when the words "I love you" came that night in the rain, they came because they were what she needed to hear. And they were true, but he did not think of them. Love was a word people used. It didn't mean anything. Actions meant everything.

It was nothing Shannon had said that made him know she loved him. It was the tender, timid way she gave herself to him. He did not know how many men she had lain with; he did not wish to know. She had mentioned more boyfriends than he could count on two hands, and he did not know how many she had failed to mention. But he had not treated her as though she was experienced, and she had not treated him as though he was just another lover. He thought now of the hesitant way she touched him, of the quiet way she plead for him, of the eager way she received him into herself. By all this he knew that although she had had sex scores of times, she had never once made love. And so he had been her fist after all.

He did not know he was crying until the dampness reached his cheeks. He lifted the bottom of his shirt and roughly wiped his face. His breath came in ragged clips. How desperately he missed her. He hadn't expected that. Not with Nadia waiting for him back at the dormitory. He swallowed hard, but the feeling of fullness in his throat did not abate. He forced himself to rise. The only words he managed to whisper were, "Goodbye. I love you. But I love her too, and I have to…Goodbye."

When he entered the suite, he went straight to his room and shut the door. He threw himself onto his bed and lay on his back with his arms crossed behind his head. The sheets were neatly pressed, an unmarred, gleaming white. They had never before been wrinkled by the application of his body. He always slept in Nadia's bed until early in the morning, and then he stole back to his room to work at his desk. The mattress felt stiff, unbroken.

He listened as the sounds died down in the suite, as the last two scientists went to bed. He knew Nadia would be expecting him, but he did not rise. He thought of Shannon and closed his eyes against the thought, and there came that darkness where light, though suddenly shut out, seems to linger and paint a blinding image before the eye. And that image was of Shannon.

He did not fight it anymore. He surrendered to the flood of memories. He would not go to Nadia tonight. He would come to her again, in time; he knew that intellectually, even if his spirit did not feel it. But he could not come to her tonight while he still thought of Shannon. It would be a betrayal.

Nadia would understand. She must have known he was going to Shannon's grave, and she had only squeezed his arm with reassurance; she had asked nothing of him. She would understand. She had always understood him, even when he had not understood himself, even when he had thought he did not have the strength to turn aside from evil. Surely she would understand this.

He turned to look towards the window and saw the night blanketing the beach. It was a black, black night, but he knew the dawn would come. It always did.

**The End**


End file.
